Dr Isabelle Hesse

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Biographical details

Isabelle Hesse researches and teaches in the area of modern and contemporary world literatures. Her work is situated at the nexus of postcolonial, Jewish, and Middle Eastern studies and has been published inThe Journal for Cultural Research, Textual PracticeandPostcolonial Text. She also has a forthcoming article in New Formations. Her first book The Politics of Jewishness (2016) addressed a significant shift in cultural perceptions of Jewishness by examining how the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine has extended ideas of Jewishness conflated with diaspora, marginality, victimhood, and the Holocaust. Through close analysis of literary productions from different geopolitical contexts – from post-war Germany to postcolonial writing to Palestine and Israel – this book demonstrates that constructions of Jewishness have taken a ‘colonial’ turn in the contemporary period, as world literature increasingly situates Jewishness in relation to Zionism and colonialism, positing Jewish identity as a means of questioning received ideas about victimhood and power. Listen to Isabelle speaking about the book here.

Research interests

Isabelle is interested in postcolonial literature and theory, Palestinian and Israeli literature and film, the intersection between postcolonial and Jewish studies, and the cultural memory of colonialism and the Holocaust in Europe. Her current book project, entitled Conflicted Narratives: Imagining Israel and Palestine in Contemporary British and German Culture, considers the ways in which tropes associated with Israel and Palestine are circulated in British and German literature and film after the first Palestinian intifada, especially in light of Britain and Germany’s contemporary politics in the Middle East and their respective commemorative practices of the Holocaust. This project examines the aesthetic and narrative strategies that authors and directors use in fiction, travelogues, memoirs, and documentaries to represent the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its history to contemporary audiences and asks to what extent these imaginings of Israel and Palestine challenge contemporary political and cultural discourses in Germany and the UK.

Supervision
Isabelle welcomes enquiries from students interested in working in the area of postcolonial and/or world literature and theory, especially Palestinian and Israeli literature and film; the intersection between postcolonial, Jewish, and Middle Eastern studies; and the politics of remembering the Holocaust and colonialism in Europe.